An Irishwoman's Diary

THE first time I went to the promenade in Salthill, Co Galway, I was under strict instructions to “kick the wall”. It’s the tradition, I was told.

And so I obeyed, a little self-consciously perhaps, and when I got to the end of the walkway I gave the wall a gentle tap with the tip of my shoe. Immediately after, two women runners followed suit, although with a little more confidence, and kicked the wall briskly before spinning around to go back the way they came.

Since that first walk, I’ve been up and down the promenade many, many times. Galway was a temporary home over the past few months while on maternity leave, Salthill, an integral part of my survival as a new mother. Numerous afternoons were spent marching along the promenade, desperately trying to get the baby to sleep, hoping for some magic in the Connemara wind that would send him off into a deep slumber. Often I walked it in a dreamlike state, wrecked from nights of feeding-baby-every- two-hours, blinking bleary-eyed out at the waves and the rocky coastline. I did it in fits and starts, stopping every few seconds to replace the baby’s soother, to stop him crying, to fix his blanket, to feed him, or just to take a rest on the benches.

And I’ve been up and down in all types of weather. On the lovely, clear days, when you can see right across to the Burren, or the blistering sunny days (of which there were few) when the promenade was packed, the students coming out to drink in the good weather, the benches full and the beaches busy with children and their buckets and spades. I’ve been there on the grey, dull days with all the regular walkers, and the windy, horizontal-rain days too, when a sort of determination would set in, to not let the elements scupper my plans. I’d battle my way slowly down the promenade, the wind pressing hard against the buggy, the baby oblivious, tucked away under layers of blankets, a hat and a plastic rain cover.

Back in Dublin, I can walk the promenade in my mind, every detail is still clear: the patch of grass beside the car park, the first beach, the curve of benches, the row of steps down to the shoreline and the yellow diving board reaching out into the sea.

The wall at the end is nothing special. Considering the type of lovely stone constructions throughout the landscape in the west, this one is nothing to write home about. Built of large stones with a few messy layers of concrete, it’s about 6ft high, with a tap half way up and a large bin alongside it.

I am, however, very fond of this rather unexceptional landmark. I became an instant devotee of the kick-the-wall tradition every time I reached the end of the promenade, looking forward to that satisfactory little tap of shoe against stone. Sometimes I would stop to watch other people do it, or discreetly observe from the benches those who did and those who didn’t. I even started watching the way people kicked the wall – a little jut of the leg, like ticking something off a list, then a quick turnaround and back down the promenade. Sometimes it was a casual, half-hearted process: two women out for a stroll stopped and chatted for a while before gently kicking the wall and heading off again. An old woman lifted her leg as if in slow motion and pressed it against the wall for a moment before lowering it again. A father demonstrated to his two children how to do it.

A few times I asked people why they kicked the wall. The answer was usually vague – it’s tradition, “just something you do” at the end of the promenade. One man said he’d heard it was something to do with the abrupt end of the promenade, and the frustration of walkers. A girl from Galway shrugged her shoulders and said yes, she was aware of the practice, but she never did it herself.

I phoned the Galway tourism office to inquire and they said some people do it for luck, although nobody really seems to know exactly how it started. But lack of knowledge about its origins doesn’t seem to stop numerous websites and tourist operators urging visitors to kick the wall – there are frequent “kick-the-wall” tours of the promenade and even a Do You Kick the Wall? page on Facebook.

One day I spotted a large group of tourists stepping out of a bus parked near the end of the promenade. They approached the wall in small huddles and took photos of each other, kicking it.

A few days later, on a cool, grey morning I walked the promenade and looked out a big, windy sea. When I got to the end I noticed a piece of piping leaning against the wall with something scrawled on it in marker: “Don’t kick the wall,” it said.

But I did it anyway.